TIAC Signature Webinar Series 2/2020

Andrew Sheng is our Distinguished Honorary Research Fellow of the Tun Ismail Ali Chair, Universiti Malaya. He is also the Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong. He is Pro-Chancellor of Bristol University, U.K. as well as Chairman, George Town Institute of Open and Advanced Studies, Wawasan Open University, Malaysia.  Previously, Andrew Sheng served as President of the Fung Global Institute, Hong Kong, as Chairman of the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, and as a central banker with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Bank Negara Malaysia (the Central Bank of Malaysia). He has also worked at the World Bank and chaired the Technical Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). In 2009, he became Pro-Chancellor of Universiti Tun Abdul Razak in Malaysia. He was adviser to the UN Environment Programme’s Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System. He holds the post of Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing and Faculty of Economics & Administration, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. A chartered accountant by training, he has a First Class Honours BSc in Economics and Honorary Doctorates from the University of Bristol and the University of Malaya. Andrew Sheng’s areas of expertise include international finance and monetary economics, financial regulation and global governance. He is a columnist for Project Syndicate, Asia News Network and leading economic journals and newspapers in China and Asia at large. He is author of 'From Asian to Global Financial Crisis: An Asian Regulator’s View of Unfettered Finance in the 1990s and 2000s'. He co-edited the book, 'Bringing Shadow Banking into the Light: Opportunity for Financial Reform in China', with Ng Chow Soon.
 

Takatoshi Ito joined the faculty of School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University as a Professor of International and Public Affairs in January 2015. An internationally renowned economist, Ito is an expert on international finance, macroeconomics, and the Japanese economy who served from 2006 to 2008 as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy. He also held senior positions in the Japanese Ministry of Finance and at the International Monetary Fund. Ito served as Dean of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy for the past two years and as professor at Japan’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. He has served as a visiting professor at both Columbia and Harvard and taught at other institutions. He earned his PhD in economics at Harvard University. Ito has had distinguished academic and research appointments such as President of the Japanese Economic Association in 2004; fellow of the Econometric Society since 1992; research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1985; and faculty fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research since 2006. He was editor-in-chief of Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, and is co-editor of Asian Economic Policy Review. In an unusual move for a Japanese academic, Ito was also appointed in the official sectors, as senior advisor in the Research Department, International Monetary Fund (1994–97) and as deputy vice minister for international affairs at the Ministry of Finance, Japan (1999–2001). He served as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (2006–2008). In 2010, he was a co-author of a commissioned study of the Bank of Thailand’s 10th year review of its inflation targeting regime. He frequently contributes op-ed columns and articles to the Financial Times and Nihon Keizai Shinbun.

He is an author of many books including The Japanese Economy (MIT Press, 1992), The Political Economy of the Japanese Monetary Policy (1997) and Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan, with T. Cargill and M. Hutchison, (MIT Press, 2000), An Independent and Accountable IMF, with J. De Gregorio, B. Eichengreen, and C. Wyplosz (1999). He is also the author of more than 130 academic (refereed) journal articles in journals such as Econometrica, American Economic Review, and Journal of Monetary Economics and chapters in books on international finance, monetary policy, and the Japanese economy. His research interests include capital flows and currency crises, microstructures of foreign exchange rates, and inflation targeting. He was awarded the National Medal with Purple Ribbon in June 2011 for his excellent academic achievement.

Athanasios Orphanides is a Professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also an Honorary Advisor to the Bank of Japan’s Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Financial Studies, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability. His research interests are on central banking, finance, and political economy and he has published extensively on these topics. He has also contributed to the ongoing debate on the euro area crisis. Before joining MIT Sloan, he held positions at central banks in the United States and in Europe. From May 2007 to May 2012, he served a five-year term as Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus and was a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank. Following the creation of the European Systemic Risk Board in 2010, he was elected a member of its first Steering Committee. Earlier, he served as Senior Advisor at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he had started his professional career as an economist. Athanasios Orphanides obtained undergraduate degrees in mathematics and economics as well as a PhD in economics from MIT.